


Lonely Lullabies for Plant Life

by daisybrien



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Death, Friendship/Love, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, IPRE, Implied Resurrection, Loneliness, M/M, Resurrection, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11353989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: Davenport cares for Merle's plants the only way he knows how.





	Lonely Lullabies for Plant Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [casetrippy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/casetrippy/gifts).



Davenport sings to Merle’s plants when he’s gone. 

He does it between missions and paperwork, sometimes in the dark between dusk and dawn when the dark silence is something palpable and his voice needs to cut through it like a knife, but always when the ship is eerily quiet and only his footsteps can be heard echoing along the empty corridors. He would rather do it alone, tells himself it is a chance to hone his practice in the years after the Conservatory; but even before this he found no need to make a performance out of it, letting his discipline and posture lack as he eases his aching bones. In the ever growing chaos of their decades gone by, Davenport learns to take each moment of isolation as a retreat; he loves his crew and family dearly, loves finding himself breathlessly swept up in their noise and laughter and support, but he cherishes every moment he spends alone. It gives him a chance to close the door on the mayhem of his everyday life, his normal that isn’t even comparable to normal, to let down the weight of his responsibility and the eyes of the people on his back as he leads them.

He gets more opportunities, the more Merle leaves them too early to bear.

Those years are the loneliest, and Davenport misses the rough, dirt-caked hands in his, the gruff laughter breaking the calm concentration over quiet card games. He misses the retort to his jokes over his shoulder, amicable grumbling and the smell of strong coffee and earth in the kitchen. Ironically, he sleeps less without Merle’s snores rumbling from the other side of his bedroom wall. 

He doesn’t know about plants or gardening; while never afraid to get down and dirty, he preferred to keep a clean composure if the chance presented itself otherwise. No matter how many times he waters per week or prunes each month, no matter having skimmed Merle’s botany journals - after hours of scouring his room to cherish every smell, every wrinkle in the untouched bedsheets, every doodle in the margins and frivolous notes kept, everything and anything to remember through the year - no matter the suggestions of the crew, the plants always wilt and wither without the guidance of Merle’s gentle hand.

But he remembers Merle eyeing him from over a broad leaf, his humble smile obscured by vines and flora as he muttered soothing nothings to the soil as if they were pets, or children. “You know,” he said, “it’s said that singing to plants help them grow,” and his eyes had shone.

So Davenport tries anyway, taking the quiet moments of solitude to sing, standing tall in front of the ship’s rows of plants like a performer rising above his audience, murmuring jaunty bar tunes to the potted ferns in the kitchen and rec spaces. He hums and belts and sometimes cries, begging each poor, withering vine to live only to sweep up its dead leaves weeks later. 

Davenport is not a gardener. He can’t coax the plants to grow in each direction, to bloom rich with fruit and flowers, can’t use his faith to bring them life from the brink of death. But sometimes when he sings he can see the plants perk just a bit; the leaves grow just a bit greener and the flowers just a bit brighter for the moment and he laughs, because Merle would want his plants to be healthy and wouldn’t want Davenport to do anything but.


End file.
